Welcome to Temple Illuminatus

[Leila Raven]

I'm the creator of Temple Illuminatus, and I just wanted to take a moment to encourage our new incoming members to reach out and introduce themselves.

It doesn't have to be a brilliant essay all about you, it can just be a simple sentence saying hello and giving people a heads up that there's a new person on board.

I encourage you to take time to get to know one another, welcome new members, make connections and friends.

When in doubt, reach out! Don't be shy!

We want to get to know you.

If you'd like to know more about me, feel free to read my profile, and feel free to ask any questions you have about me and about the site.

[Leila Raven]

Thank you GenteelWolf, and I'm glad you like the colour scheme... lol. :)

[3tgw211vcwfrd]

Hey GenteelWolf, A nice and a soulfully written epistle... Yea, you can bet Leila has set us up for the kill with the color scheme! :) 

 

BTW: your rambling is indeed intriguing and interesting! Challenge the other souls to dig deeper to examine for answers to interesting questions!! God Bless you...

 

Charles

[2lkix2n2p484f]

Hello Everyone, I am very happy to see a new website created to promote Spiritual Enlightenment-in our world today, we really need it!!!

I am a Spiritualist Medium, was psychic from as far back as I can remember, but after many life experiences, I realised that I was capable of much more. I met a friend, who told me I had the ability to contact Spirit, and she helped me a lot. That was 20 something years ago, and since then I have grown and grown, although I don't like the 'airy fairy side of things, and am very forthright and down-to-Earth in my work. I meditate, but not as often as I should, and I don't work as much as I used to. I did readings by phone, email and text for about 4 years, for Sky TV, but realised that I didn't want to be involved with the commercial route, as it rarely works anyway. I then decided to take a couple of years out-got a job as a Doctor's Receptionist, and found out that far from taking a break from it all, I was using my talents to help others still. I now know that we never get out of this, once we are signed up, it's for life, and no matter what I do or where I go, I am still helping people, still working and I will work until the day I pass over! I will be popping in here from time to time, to see what is going on and if I can help anyone, then I will. Lovely to be here! Love and Light!

[0s9jkgx8sr3l0]

simple sentence, eh? .. i can do that!

 

Hello World!!  8-) .. ok .. so .. it's technically not a sentence .. it'll have to do.

 

this looks like an interesting place to be.

 

anyway .. right .. erm .. introduce myself .. umm .. well .. i'm intrigued by stuff .. and i like to play around with ideas - i'm not too keen on "truth" as a concept. Long ago i had a tech education (eng degree, but that's all pretty much forgotten), but that was years after random wandering, so i don't take the tech/science side of things to be fundamental.

 

I'm something of a lower being - for me, enjoyment trumps enlightenment (tho one may emerge from the other. Are they  yin-yang views of the same thing? - emmm .. no .. enlightenment is the extinction of desire, so that wipes out enjoyment, doesn't it.)  .. ANYHOOOO! ...

 

so .. yeh .. glad to be here .. i'm going to look around and see what's up.

[Leila Raven]

Thanks to all respondents, it's great to have you here with us, and nice to see people from diverse backgrounds. :) Looking forward to getting to know all of you better.

[0sm82i1e7wr89]

Greetings everyone!

So, I'm finally about to participate in a community dealing with spirituality, the occult and things alike...Over the last years I've been more or less in the position of a silent observer. I frequent many forums, but - till now - rarely felt the need to take part or state my experiences and points of view. A few days ago, I recognized this site through a Twitter message and visited the Temple. The site seemed very comfortable and convinced me instantly.

A short introduction of myself: I am a 27 years old student (social and cultural anthropology as a main area of interest) and work as a freelancer (writer) since the beginning of this year. That's one thing I'm really happy about, because I'm now free to spent time with things I like and earn the needed money with it.

Naturally, life from time to time brings problems and troubles. Parts of me believe, that some problems in my life just were supposed to be to push me into a certain direction. At least, I can put my finger on one terrifying experience, that helped me grow afterwards. Without it, I wouldn't sit here and do things I like most of the time. Instead I would probably sit in an office and curse myself for not taking the opportunity.

Besides that, I am a very emotional person when it comes to terms of 'justice' (hard to say what it includes, because it's a very relative term). Of course, it's important to make a difference and recognize the wrongness in the world, but it shouldn't devour you. So, one of my goals is to gain a kind of stoic point of view and to become a calmer and more balanced person.

In the wide spectrum of the paranormal and occult, I have a special interest in energy work in general and the field of chaos magic(k). Belief systems and their paradigms fascinate me, as I see many similarities amongst the different teachings. At the moment, I spent my time with music (I can't life without it), meditation, dream work and listening to binaural beats (aka Hemi-Sync, as The Monroe Institute named it).

If you want to know something more, please look into my profile or ask me directly.

Wish you all the best, have a good day.

[Leila Raven]

Great intro, and well met. *smile* I'm very happy to here you feel comfortable here and it's great to have you with us.

[1qcrhj468kzqh]

Just stopping by to say "Hi"!

 

I'm a 39 year-old designer/author who just finished up writing my novel "Convergence 2012"... (you can check it out at http://www.robertricks.com as well as other stuff I do and am working on).

 

I'm a spiritual person always seeking the truth, which hasn't always been a pleasant journey since there's a majority of closed-minded people out there.

 

When I have more time I'll share my journey while writing Convergence 2012 and share all kinds of weirdness that happened while writing it.

~ Rob

[0le1ttvm07tc3]

Howdy, Y'all!

 

I'm Neringa, a Massachusetts (of sorts) transplant living in Lubbock, Texas. In the mundane world, I work as a therapeutic assistant for a rehab facility that specializes in post-acute traumatic brain injuries.

 

I am married and have a daughter who just turned 22. We have 3 dogs and a cat. And recently 2 small stray dogs have attached themselves to us when we moved into our new rental house  6 days ago. It's quite the pandemonium.

 

Neringa

[0s9jkgx8sr3l0]

what the hell .. i'm not afraid of dogs and cats - i'll say hi back ..

 

Hi! (i'm new here misself)

[0le1ttvm07tc3]

Hi yourself! :-)

[0le1ttvm07tc3]

Nice to meet you, too, John. I just Googled the Apostolic Johannite Order. It sounds very interesting - so open and affirming.

 

My spiritual journey has taken me to many places.

 

I was raised Catholic and then rebelled against the Church and its frustrated old men in dresses trying to micro-manage my life.

 

I explored Wicca and Paganism, becoming a 3rd degree Wiccan high priestess. I left the Craft after having disagreements w/the high priestess. (I felt that as a member of the clergy, it should be my responsibility to lead people to the point where they would be able to continue the journey on their own and no longer need to be dependent on any clergy. She, on the other hand, became very power hungry and insisted that Wicca is an autocracy and disagreed w/my belief that people should be able to lead themselves.)

 

So having left the Craft, I started going to the Unitarian-Universalist church. While it fed my intellect, I felt spiritually starved. SO I left. People would tell me to try another UU church, but at that point I wanted consistency.

 

Also at that point, my daughter was 3 years old, and my uber Old World Catholic mother was getting on my case that I need to be bringing my daughter to church. But I couldn't do that.

 

In the meantime, I was working w/a Baha'i and learning about that religion. I decided to bring my daughter to children's classes as she would be learning about other religions. I wanted her to learn about other religions so that she could decide for herself what path she would like to travel.

 

I became a Baha'i and was one for 4 years. But then again. conflicts in faith reared their ugly heads. It got to the point where mere obedience to the laws wasn't enough. I didn't agree w/the Baha'i stance on homosexuality, and I thought their approach to it contradicted their tenet of unity of science and religion. Another contradiction I felt uncomfortable with was that women were not allowed to serve on the Universal House of Justice - the supreme administrative body of the Baha'i Faith - and yet another tenet stated that there is to be equality of the sexes. And I didn't believe that God would only select a very small few to receive enlightenment and revelations and deny them to the rest of us.

 

So I left. And at this point, I was rather fed up w/religion and decided to go "free-lance."

 

At one of the New Age shops in the area, I saw something for this church called Star of the Sea. I was curious, so I decided to drive down and find it. The "church" was someone's home. I knocked don the door and introduced myself. And then I spent some time picking Rev. Arlene's brain. Rev. Arlene was a lesbian and former nun, and a lot of what she said resonated w/me. Star of the Sea was a metaphysical Christian church. I started attending services, where at that time I was in the minority as most of the church-goers were gay. But that was OK. I started bringing my daughter b/c I wanted her to get used to being around gay people and be able to view them as regular, normal human beings and not as the freaks and abominations that other religions paint them to be.

 

As my daughter got older and started hanging out w/the wrong crowd and going through a difficult time, I wanted  to get her into a church where there were more people her own age. Remembering what I heard about Church of the Good Shepherd, this tiny Episcopalian parish, I decided to check that out. Well, Good Shepherd did not really have kids my daughter's age. It was an aging parish. But it was such a tiny and close-knit group that we wound up loving dearly. It was also a very open and affirming church - a "come as you are" church. I got very involved in the church, serving as a lector, lay Eucharistic minister, on the alter guild, and on the vestry. I really loved this church. And I loved being an Episcopalian. The liturgy and tools for worship, which I loved, were almost identical to those of the Catholic faith, which I took issue. I was glad that I finally felt that I found a spiritual home.

 

But it was not to be - and this time it wasn't my choice to leave. We relocated from Massachusetts to Texas, and I was planning on joining an Episcopalian church there. But my husband wound up having a triple bypass, and while in the hospital, he converted to the Baha'i Faith. Now up until this point, my husband was very anti-religion. In fact when I was trying to raise my daughter in the Baha'i Faith, he would subtly try to undermine my efforts. But now he decided to become a Baha'i.

 

Now this created a conflict for me. You see, for several years I prayed to God to help my husband find Him. ANd I made a promise to God that whatever path He led my husband on, that I will walk that same path w/him, even if it meant leaving the path that I loved. It was a difficult promise to keep.

 

So w/that, I never did join an Episcopalian church and returned to the Baha'i Faith instead. And for awhile, the going was good. But sure enough, the same conflicts that I had 14 years ago once again surfaced.

 

What to do now?

 

Well, my daughter was in an abusive relation which required us to get her out of the state for her safety. So she went back to live w/her Nana in Massachusetts. But that didn't work out, so she was going to return to Texas. I was so concerned that she was going to get back to this scumbag and hang out w/his family (of which almost all have criminal records) I wanted to get her into a community of people who will uplift her and serve as examples of the heights that could be reached by engaging your talents and abilities and trying to meet and surpass your potential.

 

But b/c my daughter was an agnostic and totally turned off by religion, the Baha'i Faith wasn't going to work, and neither was the Episcopal church. SO I scoped out the local UU church and reported back to my daughter. When she returned to Texas, I took her to the UU church, and she loved it. She looks forward to every Sunday, and we're both attending classes to become members.

 

So maybe at this point I am ready for the UU church myself. It is a welcoming community of free-thinkers, and that is a breath of fresh air.

 

In the meantime, w/the help of my friend Lindaru (who invited me to join this group), I am gradually learning what it means to be a light worker.

 

So that's my spiritual journey in a nutshell.

 

Oh yeah, my mother is still praying the rosary for me so that I would return to the *One True Church*. LOL

 

Peace,

 

Neringa